Kleinkastell Hillscheid

The Kleinkastell Hillscheid is a small Roman fort on the Upper Germanic Limes, now part of the UNESCO World Heritage. It stands in the Hillscheider Wald, a kilometre north-east of Hillscheid in the Westerwaldkreis. The site lies on a high terrace above the Montabaurer Höhe, where two ancient roads from the Rhine plain met the Limes wall. The fort is worth visiting because it shows how the Romans guarded the frontier. Early researchers like Friedrich Wilhelm Schmidt in 1833 still saw strong walls and deep ditches. By 1857 Carl August von Cohausen found almost nothing left, as stones had been taken for road-building and treasure hunters had dug everywhere. The Reichs-Limeskommission cleared the site in 1894 under Otto Dahm, and in 2003 the village council conserved the foundations and rebuilt part of the smaller inner fort and the nearby watchtower Wp 1/71. Visitors walk through the quiet woods to see the low stone outlines of the outer fort, 43 by 36 metres, with its wide ditch and narrow entrance. Inside, the smaller square fort stands at the north-west corner, its rounded corners and single gate still visible. A small tower in its south-east corner may once have had two or three storeys. The path continues through the forest to the reconstructed watchtower halfway to the next fort at Arzbach, where the Limes earthworks are still clear.